Photo Credit: Carmel Clay Parks & Recreation
Your agency’s dog park is nearing completion, and the grand opening for the new community gem is on the horizon. What felt like an eternity ago isn’t just quietly sneaking up on you; it’s banging down the door. Luckily, you had the forethought to put together a foolproof plan to ensure the park operates in an efficient, safe, and sustainable manner.
Careful planning—sometimes over a matter of years—is imperative in ensuring a project goes off without a hitch, and an operations plan is one of the most important steps. Operations plans provide clear objectives, standards, staffing requirements, timetables, and processes for evaluating progress.
In early fall of 2015, Carmel Clay Parks & Recreation (CCPR) in Indiana launched the Central Bark Park with the help of a detailed operations plan that allowed the department to avoid many of the pitfalls that other organizations have experienced. CCPR gathered national benchmark data from comparable industry-leading park and recreation agencies with high cost recovery, National Gold Medal-winning agencies, and nationally accredited agencies. Additionally, the department completed an analysis of local dog parks in the Indianapolis metropolitan area to gather pertinent information on membership fees, ID requirements, park size, rules, amenities, maintenance standards, sponsorships, and potential obstacles.